


these hands that have lived with you

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:55:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: “Give me that. You’ve got hands like a sailor.”“Funny,” Gabrielle said, straightfaced even as Xena seized the needle from her. “I don’t seem to recall you complaining about my hands last night.”The incredibly cozy opening scene of 04x13, "Paradise Found", but this time with added sex.





	these hands that have lived with you

“Give me that. You’ve got hands like a sailor.” 

“Funny,” Gabrielle said, straightfaced even as Xena seized the needle from her. “I don’t seem to recall you complaining about my hands last night.”

And with that, she reclaimed the needle from Xena and knocked her hands out of the way. Xena rolled her eyes but allowed it, and Gabrielle continued her steady stitching up of Xena’s leg. 

Truth be told, it was nice not to have to do this herself anymore. She’d taught Gabrielle how to stitch wounds ages ago, just because you never knew when you’d need to have a skill like this handy and it was usually too late to learn once you needed it. And so, under Xena’s guidance and supervision, Gabrielle had first acquired her skills on Xena’s body. It hadn’t exactly been a picnic for either of them. Xena had gritted her teeth whenever the needle drove too deep, and Gabrielle herself had been pretty green about the gills; but she’d pressed determinedly through until the gash on Xena’s arm had closed. 

Xena hadn’t required her to do it again, but Gabrielle had always been a quick study; and she hadn’t been surprised several months later when she’d struggled back into consciousness from a lucky shot to find that Gabrielle had fended off the last remaining highwayman, dragged Xena to relative safety, set up camp, and made quick work of cleaning and stitching up the one wound that wouldn’t have waited for Xena to treat it herself. 

“I think the stitches are messy,” she’d apologized. The pull of sinew against skin and the inflamed ache of the wound on the back of her thigh had been obvious since she’d groggily regained awareness of her surroundings, and Xena had craned her head and twisted her body to see that Gabrielle was right. 

“Yeah. That’s gonna scar,” she said absently, tracing it with her eyes. 

“Do you want me to redo it?” Gabrielle had offered, but her pinched expression told Xena how much she hated the idea. 

Xena grinned faintly. “Nah. Some people think scars are sexy.” Gabrielle’s eyes had skittered away at that. Xena suppressed a laugh and gentled her voice. “It’s fine. It’ll heal. That’s all I need.”

At the rate Gabrielle was going now, Xena mused that she might be getting a matching scar on the front of her thigh. The stitches appearing under her steady hand had improved over the years, but still weren’t the neatest Xena had ever seen. She looked up from her leg to take her in: tantalizingly damp and tantalizingly naked except for one of their furs she’d wrapped around herself against the damp chill of the cave. The warmth of the fire had caught in her drying hair and made it shine in deeper shades of gold that usual even while casting shadows over the planes of her studious face. She was beautiful - not that that was anything new - but there was a particular quality to her disheveled, focused state that was intensely appealing to Xena.

“Stop it.”

Xena startled from her reverie. Gabrielle’s eyes had never strayed from her task, and Xena’s eyes narrowed at the embedded accusation. “Stop what?” 

“I can feel you judging my work.”

“I made it clear I’m fine doing this myself,” Xena pointed out, and decided not to mention that something other than Gabrielle's stitching had caught her attention. “Still am.”

Neither of them moved, and a smile appeared at the corners of Gabrielle’s mouth where Xena could still just barely see them. 

“Looks like you and your sailor hands are just about done, anyway,” Xena said, just because she was feeling antagonistic. 

Gabrielle rolled her own eyes in response to that, but within a few moments, she’d neatly tied off the end and given her leg a pat to signal she was finished. 

“The thing about sailor hands,” she said as she stowed away the needle and unused sinew, “is that they’re nimble. Steady. Patient. They’ve never met a knot they can’t untie. They’re rough, sure - sea salt will toughen anyone’s skin, and handling ropes all day will give anyone calluses.”

“Is this a very longwinded way of you getting around to saying that I like it rough?” Xena asked, giving her best try at appearing bored and unimpressed. But the furs had slipped further down Gabrielle’s body as she’d rifled through their packs, and Xena watched with keen interest when Gabrielle didn’t adjust them higher on her body again. 

Gabrielle only chuckled, coming back to stand between Xena’s legs again and pressing languidly closer - a move that was only partially foiled by the thick obstruction of furs keeping her body from Xena’s. “No. Does anything about this feel rough to you?” 

“Hmm,” Xena said noncommittally. “There’s still plenty of time for you to get there.”

“You’re eager for someone who was so against my sailor hands not five minutes ago,” Gabrielle observed, tsking. She’d reached around Xena to stealthily unlace her leathers, and as the corset loosened around Xena’s torso and breasts, Xena leaned into the offering of Gabrielle’s rain-damp neck and breathed deeply. 

“Maybe I just know better than to underestimate you,” she said, and delighted in the way Gabrielle shivered at the sensation of her breath on her neck. “And, if you bothered to notice, I never said I didn’t like your sailor hands. Just that you have them.” She didn't think it had honestly bothered Gabrielle too much if the way she was pushing down her leathers enough for those same calloused hands to palm her breasts was any indication; and she wasn't surprised when Gabrielle's grin formed against her skin.

"So this is you admitting you like them rough after all?” 

Again, Xena rolled her eyes. Abruptly she stood and whisked a startled Gabrielle off of her feet, furs and all, walked a few feet, and laid her down nearer the warmth of the fire. Conveniently, when Xena unwrapped Gabrielle from the furs they provided about half of their bedding, and it was easy to resettle themselves in it. 

Even more conveniently, it left Gabrielle completely bare under Xena’s eyes. 

She allowed Xena to look for all of five seconds before impatiently tugging again at Xena’s leathers. “Off,” she said. 

Chuckling, Xena complied, and slid the full length of her own bare body over Gabrielle’s when they had been tossed to the side. Gabrielle wasted no time in drawing her into a deep kiss, and then grabbing at her hips while she slid a thigh between Xena’s. Irritatingly, the movement caused just enough of a stretch that Xena could immediately feel the pull of her skin against the sinew binding it together. 

“Hey, you wanna do these stitches again?” Xena broke the kiss to ask pointedly. 

Gabrielle gasped in realization and remorse, eyes wide. “Oh, Xena, I’m sorry. I forgot. Did they break?”

Xena batted away her hand that was questing to check and pushed back her shoulders where she was trying to sit up. “Stop, stop, they’re fine. Just - careful, or they will.”

Obligingly, Gabrielle did as directed and rearranged her legs so that Xena lay in the cradle of her hips and let the strain off of the skin of her thigh. “You want me to be on top?” 

“No. I want you to stay where you are,” Xena said, and then reconsidered. “For now, anyway.”

“Huh. I thought you wanted it rough.”

Xena seized one of her hands, which had been rasping lightly along her back and sides, and pressed it harder against her: half response, half instruction. Gabrielle instantly got the hint, and let her nails dig slightly in while she was at it. 

“Funny,” Xena said, and Gabrielle’s eyes narrowed at the word. “You seem to be the one of us with that preoccupation.”

Xena kissed her again before she could say anything in response: a plan that backfired beautifully when Gabrielle’s nails dug into her back in earnest at the feeling of Xena’s tongue in her mouth, both legs coming up to wrap themselves around Xena’s hips as she did, already moaning languorously. It was at least partially for Xena’s benefit - Gabrielle was wet against her stomach, but not _ that _wet, not yet - but dammit if it wasn’t working for her. It drove some primal part of her to kiss Gabrielle harder and fist a hand in her still-drying hair, which of course had been Gabrielle’s intention. But it still surprised another moan out of her, this one higher and more breathless. 

When she took the time to think about it, Xena never stopped being surprised at how easy between them, no matter what the tone. If, at the beginning, anyone had pointed at the girl from Poteidaia and told Xena what they would become to each other, she would have laughed them off the road. 

It wasn’t entirely her fault that then, she couldn’t have imagined the way Gabrielle would transform so completely in just a few months, how aware she would become of herself and her surroundings - and what it would mean for Xena, who was included in Gabrielle’s surroundings. It wasn’t completely her fault either that she couldn’t have pictured then the way that Gabrielle’s body would throw off the last vestiges of adolescence through traveling and training, and that she would emerge at last fully into being, fully woman and fully wanting. 

Xena would honestly be just as happy slowing things down to a crawl and taking her time with her mouth between Gabrielle’s legs, or rolling them over and letting Gabrielle on top after all, or even - if it’s what Gabrielle was in the mood for - bringing the mood to something sweeter and whispering all the endearments against Gabrielle’s flushed skin that she usually kept locked up in her heart. 

She’d compromised before the thought was fully formed in her mind, trailing her mouth down the flushed pink of Gabrielle’s neck and chest and breasts, and leaving marks that made Gabrielle gasp in her wake in lieu of words. She ignored her nipples over Gabrielle’s protests and leveraged herself up to take in her handiwork. The sight made her smile privately. 

“Satisfied?” came Gabrielle’s voice, probably about as dryly as she could manage.

Xena smiled again and hummed, and let the finger that had been teasing the underside of a breast finally, finally move to manipulate a nipple into stiffness. “Not nearly,” she admitted as Gabrielle’s breath stuttered. “Getting there, though.”

“Good to hear. Could you, uh - ”

Xena cut her off by taking the same nipple into her mouth - or, rather, Gabrielle’s own sudden inhale did it for her.

“Yeah, that,” Gabrielle still managed to finish, though after a moment and with some effort. 

It didn’t take long for Gabrielle’s body to begin to bow into Xena’s hands and mouth, arching in an attempt to find the contact even before Xena had broken it; and Xena kept her suspended in that state of anticipation as long as she herself could stand, her focus honed to an almost frenzied state in its singleminded pursuit of the merging of skin and breath and voice and taste, the expansion and contraction, the rise and fall, the mingling of intention and desire under her body and hands and mouth. One of Gabrielle’s hands palmed her neck just under her ear, gently if unconsciously; and in Xena’s state of hyperawareness, she could feel every rasp of roughness on Gabrielle’s hands skimming her skin in a delicious contrast of sensations. She sat up with one final sucking kiss to a sensitive spot on Gabrielle’s abdomen, loving the way the muscles there jumped under her lips and tongue, and pulled Gabrielle’s hand to her chest as she did. 

Gabrielle didn’t speak this time as Xena surveyed her body, marked by more than Xena in the last half hour. Her eyes were hooded and dark, intense on Xena’s face as they waited for whatever Xena had next in store. Xena let her both of her hands play with Gabrielle’s one as she looked, tracing every callus, the perennial dry patch in the web between thumb and forefinger, the strength in her wrist and fingers. 

“Xena?” Gabrielle murmured questioningly when Xena had paused for just a moment too long. 

Reassuringly, Xena smiled and ran her thumb over her palm. “I love your hands,” she said. “I love the way they feel on me. I love the way they feel inside of me.”

Gabrielle inhaled sharply at the admission, sensing the invitation and clearly wanting to take it; but Xena quelled her with a look. 

“These tell me you fight with a weapon,” Xena said, brushing her fingertips lightly over the calluses on Gabrielle’s palms and fingers, before turning her attention to the defined muscles of her arms. “But these tell me it’s defensively.” Both hands ran appreciatively down strong thighs, which flexed at her touch. “These tell me you can ride a horse, and well.” She slid backwards to continue her touch down Gabrielle’s calves, lifting each in turn and kissing them. “These tell me how much time you spend walking and running.” 

She surprised Gabrielle into a yelp when she quickly popped her big toe into her mouth, sucking once before letting it go. Laughing, Xena soothed the wide-eyed confusion of her body’s responses by rubbing her instep with practiced fingers. 

“These tell me that somebody owes you more foot rubs,” she said, which did the trick of getting Gabrielle to smile and relax. 

Xena did her best to keep her that way, kissing her way back up Gabrielle’s legs and leaving them bent and spread, with a brief tease of a kiss between her legs that made Gabrielle whine. Her tongue lingered around Gabrielle’s belly button before scanning upwards to find two perfect breasts, and then, finally, her mouth. Gabrielle tried to follow when she broke the kiss, and she conceded just enough to let their lips pull at each other once more before she raised herself up again, shifting subtly to find a position that didn’t strain her stitches. 

“I love that every part of our life is inscribed on every part of your body. And,” Xena added, moving slowly while Gabrielle whimpered, finally discerning her direction, “I love that I’m written here, too.”

If Gabrielle was disappointed that it was Xena’s fingers sliding into her, and not hers into Xena, she didn’t show it. Her head tipped back, exposing the long line of her neck just slightly, her almost-dry hair shining in a golden mess around her, her eyes closing, her mouth opening silently. 

“Okay?” Xena murmured to her. Gabrielle looked up at her then, eyes half-lidded and lust-clouded, and a wave of tenderness crashed unexpectedly over Xena in the moment before Gabrielle’s legs once again wrapped around her insistently. 

“Mmm hmm,” she murmured back, and pressed an open mouthed kiss to Xena’s neck. “Go.”

And so Xena did. She hadn’t lied - she did love the feeling of Gabrielle inside of her, but it was possible she loved the feeling of being inside Gabrielle more. Gabrielle was already swollen and wet around her fingers, subtly clenching to the slow rhythm of Xena’s thrusts and the curling of her fingers. Xena drove in as far as she could and ground there for a moment with Gabrielle’s clit against her palm, before pulling back, dragging the tips of her fingers along the top of Gabrielle’s inner walls as if encouraging her to come out. 

As expected, Gabrielle did. Her arms immediately tightened around Xena’s shoulders, and her fingers curled into Xena’s skin. 

“More,” she demanded on a groan. 

Xena was happy to oblige, especially since ‘more’ had been her plan anyway. Her fingers picked up the tempo between Gabrielle’s legs, her thumb occasionally grazing her clit, and she was immediately rewarded with Gabrielle’s voice, so disconnected from any other thoughts than of what she was feeling right now that it told Xena exactly what that feeling was, wordless and constant. 

There was nothing more beautiful than this. Xena loved Gabrielle’s pleasure, but it was the things beneath it - the way their bodies knew each other, and how well, and why - that made this the purest expression of their life together that Xena could imagine. It went beyond what she could articulate, and so she let her senses take over and tell her the story: the way Gabrielle’s body welcomed hers as she dropped all the way down; the way she tightened around Xena, shoulders, hips, and fingers; the way her voice spiraled higher and louder into a sound that made Xena’s heart beat frantically against her chest; the way Gabrielle’s breath made her chest heave desperately and come in heavy, hot gasps against Xena’s neck, trapped there by the thick, falling mass of Xena’s dark hair. 

“Okay?” Xena asked again when she’d watched Gabrielle come back to herself. In response, Gabrielle nodded, reaching up to thumb Xena’s lips. Xena caught it between them and nipped lightly. Gabrielle’s eyes closed again, and Xena could feel her clench again around her fingers still inside her. She smiled at the sight and the feeling and released Gabrielle’s thumb from between her lips, pressing a small kiss to it as she did. 

It was enough for the moment to settle between them, and Gabrielle hummed contentedly as she opened her eyes again. “How’s your leg?” 

“Holding.” Xena glanced down at it - it pulled slightly in the half-kneeling position she’d risen to, and hurt about as much as could be expected considering that there was a wound to contend with, but not more than it should. 

“I guess it would hurt it to kneel?” 

“Probably. Why? What’ve you got in mind?” The smirk on Gabrielle’s lips was answer enough, and prompted a similar expression from Xena’s. “That just might be worth it.”

“Hmm,” Gabrielle hummed into Xena’s kiss, and then gave one last tiny gasp as Xena finally withdrew from inside of her. “I’m not sure if I should be offended at the “might be” part or nagging you not to talk me into it anyway.”

“Neither,” Xena decided for her, but didn’t elaborate. As intended, Gabrielle took it for the compliment it was, but similarly didn’t mention it beyond a pleased smile. 

“Tell me what I can do,” she said, stroking the inside of her arm. 

Xena sighed. “You wanna be on top, huh?” 

Delighted, Gabrielle grinned. “Sure. How? Or do I get to pick?” 

“Don’t overthink it,” Xena warned, and let Gabrielle roll them until their positions were reversed and Xena was looking up at her. Some of her hair that had dried into flyaways, and Xena pushed it back behind her ears, suddenly realizing that Gabrielle was watching her indulgently. 

“Okay,” Gabrielle agreed, turning to press a kiss to one of her hands before Xena let it fall from her face and it came to curve under her arm instead. “I won’t.” 

The mood had calmed, although Xena’s body was still thrumming with the potential of unrealized release. Gabrielle had always treated Xena’s body reverently - not necessarily delicately, or even carefully, but always with a keen sense of what it meant to her for them to be here like this, together. It was no different this time. Xena hoped it never would be. Her fingers ran through Gabrielle’s tangled hair as she kissed her way to Xena’s breasts, and as Xena idly twisted it out of the way, she sighed at the feeling of Gabrielle’s mouth enveloping a nipple. 

“Too slow?” Gabrielle asked, just this side of teasing. 

“No,” Xena said wryly. “But don’t slow down too much, either.”

“Got it.” 

Gabrielle didn’t tease her much more, true to her word, and make her steady way down Xena’s body until she gently, but firmly, pushed Xena’s thighs open and settled between her legs. Just the sight of her there made Xena’s body wind tighter and her mouth go dry. Gabrielle’s hands curled around Xena’s thighs, and when her fingers ran into the stitches she’d put in there, they gentled immediately. 

“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile. Her breath hit Xena where Gabrielle had already spread her open, warm and wet, and Xena couldn’t help her gasp. 

“No problem,” she said after a second when she’d recovered. 

“Is this where I tell you how much I love your body too?” she said, apparently deciding that now was a good moment to tease; and as much as Xena wanted to grab her by her hair and direct her where she really wanted her, Gabrielle’s fingers on another, older scar stopped her. 

“I know you do,” Xena told her as sincerely as she had the capacity to do, and she did. She could feel it in every way that Gabrielle touched her, and in where and how her touches lingered. She’d sewn herself into the scar she was touching without realizing it, the same as she had the wound that she’d stitched today; and Xena knew that Gabrielle would gladly verbalize this for her if she needed to hear it the way Gabrielle had earlier. 

Fortunately, Gabrielle seemed to intuit that Xena needed her to get on with it more than she needed to hear it, and settled back in. Xena ran her hands through her hair again, and again twisted it away from her face, this time with the intention of seeing it as Gabrielle’s mouth finally connected with her. That intention went out the window at the first contact of tongue and clit. Xena was already further gone that she’d thought she would be, and Gabrielle’s hair spilled through her fingers where she clenched restlessly at it instead. 

All the while, the soft press of Gabrielle’s fingers still hadn’t left that scar under Xena’s left thigh, and she made circles absently in the same rhythm as her tongue was making on Xena’s clit, changing to up and down motions when she licked instead along Xena’s lips, pressing harder with her fingertips when she swiped slowly, intentionally up. It was enough to get Xena’s attention, and she nearly lost her mind when Gabrielle just as slowly cast her eyes upwards to meet Xena’s. 

Gabrielle’s muffled chuckle made her aware that she’d moaned, and the vibrations of the sound against her made do it again. Xena’s mind felt like it was on fire, every inch of her aware of exactly where Gabrielle was and what she was doing; and when Gabrielle finally took her chance to slide her fingers inside Xena at the same time that her lips wrapped around her clit and sucked, it took only a few moments for Xena to actually lose her mind, her world narrowed to the points where Gabrielle was touching her and the hoarse cries she vaguely recognized as her own. 

But Gabrielle didn’t stop, giving Xena only a moment to catch her breath before diving back in with more fervor than before. Xena was oversensitized enough that she almost instinctively pushed Gabrielle away before she caught sight of her face: passionate, determined, focused, as if there were something she was trying to draw out of Xena that she couldn’t ask for in any other way. 

“Okay, okay,” Xena panted, tapping at Gabrielle’s shoulders and wincing a little at the way her body couldn’t settle on whether it was feeling either arousal or discomfort. “Slower’s good now.”

Gabrielle immediately slowed and gentled the touch of her lips and tongue, and looked up again at Xena to gauge her expression. Xena ran her fingers through her hair in response, focusing instead on the sensation of Gabrielle’s fingers curling deliberately inside her and discovering that her body was quickly deciding that arousal was winning out. 

Whatever she saw was enough for Gabrielle, who closed her eyes again and quickly seemed to lose herself in the work of her hands and mouth. Xena followed suit, and let time slip away in favor of being overtaken by the fusion of the myriad of ways this woman made her feel. There wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t give her. Whatever she was looking for in Xena’s body and responses, all of its truths were already hers. 

And so she drifted, lost until she was being kissed as softly as the movement of the fingers through her folds. She opened her eyes again to the hazy awareness that Gabrielle was hovering over her, intently focused on her face. 

“Good?” she whispered. 

Xena could only moan in response, any words she might have had made unreachable by pleasure consuming her. 

Again, it seemed to be enough of a response to satisfy Gabrielle, who settled her body deliberately on top of her until, in a delirious melding of skin and sweat, Xena could feel her everywhere. 

“Xena,” she murmured into her skin. “Xena.”

It was as good as the endearments Xena had wanted to speak into her skin; Xena could feel them all buzzing against her where Gabrielle mumbled her kisses, all the words she wanted to express seemingly contained within the four letters of Xena’s own name. 

All - fatally - but three.

“I love you.”

As they always did these days, those words out of Gabrielle’s mouth made Xena’s emotions swell up in turmoil, even far enough away from the source or even the thought of it; and the great tide of them was enough to sweep Xena away in the state she was in, convulsing around Gabrielle and crying out in something between ecstasy and grief and a love so deep it would always encompass the terrifying heights and depths of both. 

Even Gabrielle looked alarmed when Xena came back to herself, trembling as she slowly dragged her hands over her eyes. 

“Xena,” she said, trying to take one of Xena’s hands. “What is it?”

Xena let her, and with her other arm, she drew her down so that they once again pressed as closely together as they could. 

_ There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give you _, Xena thought; but still she remained silent, unable to speak. 

There was something coming for them that Xena couldn’t stop. She’d wondered increasingly over the last few months if this in itself were the curse - not even the idea that Gabrielle would die with her love for Xena on her lips, but the idea that Xena’s inability to stop it would echo to her throughout time like some taunt of the Fates’, resounding eternally throughout the universe and threaded through with her failure. 

With effort, Xena pushed away the image of Gabrielle on a cross, along with her words. 

“Nothing,” she finally got out. “I’m fine.”

Gabrielle pushed up to study her face and was clearly about to protest, but a noise in the distant chambers of the cave made them both startle and tense. 

“What was that?”

Gabrielle was already rising and dressing in her own clothes, which were finally dry from the warmth of the fire. “Just stay here,” she told Xena, who had sat up to follow her. Gabrielle extended a hand in warning while grabbing a torch with the other. “Don’t break those stitches, alright? I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” Xena muttered as she disappeared, but was already reaching for her leathers and pulling them on. “What could go wrong.”

**Author's Note:**

> Facts about this thing: 
> 
> lucyllawless on tumblr's fic prompt.  
the first thing I've written I felt I needed to actually rate E so I'm hoping it's halfway decent, pls tell me if it's not.  
didn't manage to get in the argument re: Xena's "dark side" that actually happens in the opener but I hope y'all don't mind.  
I continue to be obsessed with the idea that Gabrielle telling Xena she loves her was kind of awful for Xena throughout season four but similarly hope y'all don't mind.


End file.
